



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

"—BV^HT 

Cftup-©njnjrigljt 1}o,. 

Shelf 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 























BUSINESS 


A PLAIN TALK 

WITH MEN AND WOMEN WHO WORK 



AMOS R. WELLS 


MANAGING EDITOR OF THE GOLDEN RULE, BOSTON 



New York Chicago Toronto 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature 


Vw 




Copyright, 1894, 
by 

Fleming H. Revell Company. 


BUSINESS: 


A PLAIN TALK WITH MEN AND WOMEN 
WHO WORK. 

A BOY twelve years old, the unlearned 
son of an untaught Jewish carpenter, is 
found by his unlearned mother talking 
wisely with wise doctors of the law in the 
temple. When she upbraids him for desert¬ 
ing the home-bound party he answers—he, 
the untaught carpenter’s son—“ Wist ye not 
that I must be about my Father’s busi¬ 
ness?” 

“Your father’s business, lad, is not with 
books, but with benches; not with the law, 
but with the saw; not with men, but with 
matter.” 

“ Wist you not, mother, that I must be 
about my Father’s business?” 

“Your father’s business, strange boy, is 
3 


4 


'BUSINESS 


hammering nails into wood, not truth into 
the hearts of men. And he gets money for 
it, which is better even than the approval of 
these great scholars of the Bible.” 

“ Wist ye not, neighbors, that I must be 
about my Father’s business?” 

“ Is the boy demented, or has Joseph 
turned sage without our knowledge ? Come, 
lad, back with your weeping mother to your 
father’s shop; there help him as is your 
wont, and grow up to be as good a carpen¬ 
ter as he is. Don’t get above your father’s 
business.” 

So it was that Christ went up again to 
Nazareth, and was subject to his parents, 
until the Baptist had prepared his way, and 
he could enter in due course his Father’s 
business. 

The American Noun. 

This first recorded saying of our blessed 
Lord contains the American noun. Do you 
know the American noun ? It is “ business.” 
And the American adjective is “business¬ 
like.” 


<A TLA IN TALK 


5 


Do you doubt it? Go into any city you 
please. On what errand are these hurrying 
thousands bent? Business. What fills the 
minds of most of them? Business. For 
six days in the week what fills their crowded 
daylight? Business. 

Their evenings, even when wife and chil¬ 
dren bring in love and cheer—what lies be¬ 
neath it all as a harsh, fretting, harassing 
undertone? Business. Their Sundays, even 
in the most sacred place—God’s Word in 
their ears from singing choir and holy priest 
—what enters imperatively, and pulls the 
soul from its attitude of prayer, and holds 
the hands from their grasp on heaven? 
Business. 

When they meet, what forms the staple of 
their talk ? Their business. What occupies 
half their daily paper? Business advertise¬ 
ments. What question is most frequently 
asked of a man’s character? “Does he 
attend to business?” And of a man’s re¬ 
sults? " Is he successful in business?” 

It is held to be a reproach to a man if he 


6 


’BUSINESS 


is not engaged in some business, and it is 
considered a matter to be proud of if the 
man manages his business successfully, and 
sticks to it till the funeral knell rings out 
from the belfry. 

Being Driven by Business . 

“Ah, but a man must drive his business,” 
one says, “ or his business will drive him.” 

You are quite of the mind of the man in 
Christ’s parable, who could not go to the 
feast because he had to drive some oxen. 
That man thought he was driving his busi¬ 
ness—his oxen—but he wasn’t; his ox-busi¬ 
ness was driving him. 

That is a terrible thing to happen to any 
business man—to be driven by his business; 
it would be ludicrous if it were not so really 
terrible. Haven’t you seen the transforma¬ 
tion in scores of cases? The young mai\ 
starts out with flashing eye and eager hand, 
proudly directing the ox—his business—in 
the furrow before him. But, ere many a 
year has passed, the erect back, that was at 


A TLA IN TALK 


7 


right angles to the present and fronting the 
future, has become parallel to the present; 
goes down, down, down, toward the furrow 
—the rut. His eager, manly hand grows 
horny, hard; the fingers adhere, solidify— 
hoofs. His feet, that so proudly pressed the 
loam, are other hoofs—plod, plod, plod. 

The pressure of the yoke upon the neck— 
a heavy yoke. The pressure of the harness 
against the sides. The pull of the plow as 
it wrenches its way through the tough soil. 
The stinging call of the driver lashing from 
behind. And that driver, alert, imperative, 
merciless, exacting, that driver is the ox. 
That driver is the business which the poor 
man flatters himself he is driving, but which 
is driving him. 

Are We in Harness? 

How can we tell when we are driving our 
business, and when our business is driving 
us? In the first place, let us ask ourselves, 
Is it easy to escape from our business? At 
night can we lock it up in our desks, bar it 


8 


f BUSINESS 


up in our stores, and ride home free men? 
Or does our business sit down in the cars 
beside us without waiting to ask, “ Is this 
seat reserved, sir?” 

As we look out upon the beautiful land¬ 
scape, does our business hang head down¬ 
ward from the car roof, and grin in at us 
through the car window ? As we plod 
heavily to our homes, does our business stick 
to our backs like an old man of the sea, and 
refuse to be shaken off? As the family 
gathers about the evening meal, is this same 
obtrusive stranger present, snatching like a 
harpy half the food from our mouths, and 
poisoning the remainder of it? 

And does he even pursue us to our beds, 
hang choking about our necks, stick his long 
finger into our brains and set them whirling 
in the darkness, and leave us about two 
o’clock only to spend the rest of the night in 
concocting for us a headache for a morning 
gift? Do we find our business thus difficult 
to shake off? Surely, then, we are in the 


<A TLAIN TALK 


9 


harness; we are not driving our business, but 
our business is driving us. 

Have We Animal Spirits ? 

In the second place, let us ask ourselves 
about our animal spirits. I never could see 
why they are called animal spirits, when so 
few animals possess them. Puppies have 
them, and kittens, and lambs, and colts, and 
calves; but when the puppy has become a 
watch-dog, and the kitten a mouser, and the 
lamb has been sheared a few times, and the 
colt and the calf have become draft-horse 
and yoked ox, they no longer have ’animal 
spirits, but bestial spirits. 

Such is the fate of the animal spirits of a 
man when he, too, becomes a beast of 
burden. If he has hold of the plow-handles 
he may dance in the furrow; but not if he is 
pulling the plow. 

Really, one of the most solemn, serious, 
and momentous questions a man can ask 
himself is this: “ Is it becoming easier or 


10 


'BUSINESS 


harder for me to laugh?” If harder, he’s 
down in the furrow, and the harness is clos¬ 
ing about him. 

One of the most valuable of human facul¬ 
ties is the capacity for a game. It is be¬ 
coming more valuable every year, as our busi¬ 
ness becomes more aggressive and intolerant. 
Some day—before long, too, I hope—there 
will rise up a great educational reformer, 
another Horace Mann, who will introduce 
into all our business colleges and technical 
schools a thorough course in the art of rec¬ 
reation. 

Why not? How few of our business men 
know how to put back into themselves what 
they have taken out, with a prodigal hand, 
during the day! More than that: how few 
even recognize such a need! Shrewd in re¬ 
taining a fat balance at the banker’s, in add¬ 
ing to their reserve funds, they carry but a 
lean balance in their bodies and spirits, and 
have no reserve fund whatever. Poor men! 
Poor men! How sadly their drafts on them¬ 
selves are going to protest, some day! 


«A TLA IN TALK 


11 

A wise farmer practices better bookkeep¬ 
ing with the ox that he drives. He gives 
him rest enough and food enough to rec¬ 
reate his body for the plow. But the busi¬ 
ness that drives so many business men is a 
master less wise. His schedule admits no 
time for recreation, nor do his plans admit 
the thought of it. There exists no sillier 
spendthrift than* the passion for business— 
spendthrift of brain and body, years and 
cheer, happiness and hopefulness. Poor, 
bankrupt men in the harness! 

Looking Up or Down. 

But in the third place, if we want to find 
out whether we are driven by our business 
or are the drivers ourselves, let us ask most 
seriously and answer most frankly this ques¬ 
tion : Are we looking up or down ? 

Beasts of burden look down. However 
often Concord seers have advised men to 
hitch their wagons to the stars, there yet 
remains to be invented a harness that is 
conducive to star-gazing. Our blessed re- 


12 


"BUSINESS 


ligion finds nothing so worldly that it cannot 
transform it with the touch of things heav¬ 
enly. Yet, just the same, it remains true 
that such transformation is needed before 
things worldly become heavenly. 

There is nothing inherently spiritual and 
uplifting in any harness, plow, or furrow. 
The plowshare may turn down a daisy, but 
the ox knows nothing of it—nor does the 
poet, if the ox is driving him. The ledger’s 
neat pages and accurate columns have in 
them no satisfying joy, save to the soul that 
is in love with that heaven whose first law is 
order. Bright windows, fresh carpets, spot¬ 
less furniture—all that a housewife may 
reckon among her triumphs of cleanliness— 
will give her satisfaction only as she is get¬ 
ting hold of that godliness which is the next- 
door neighbor of cleanliness. 

There is no worldly occupation whose 
natural gravity is other than the gravity 
of the world, pulling down to the selfsame 
center. On the contrary, there is no worldly 


<A TLAIN TALK 


13 


occupation into which the sky may not fall, 
with all the stars of glory. 

Double need, then, of asking whether we 
have in our business the downward look of 
one in the harness, or the upward look of 
one at the plow-handles. Is prayer an in¬ 
stinct with us, or a duty ? Is the church an 
interruption to the shop, or the shop, if any¬ 
thing, an interruption to the church ? Is it 
harder to tear ourselves from the reading of 
our Bible or of our newspaper? 

Is the thought of death distasteful to us? 
Do we drown out the appealing eternities 
with our i 893 ’s and our i 894 *s? Do we 
seek to make amends for the loss of interior 
religion with punctiliousness regarding the 
exterior requirements? 

Which worries us most, loss of goodness 
or loss of goods ? a fall from grace or a fall 
of stocks? Which interests us most, the 
conversion of a soul to Christ or the conver¬ 
sion of a note into cash? Does the world 
appear more to us like a stepping-stone or 


14 


'BUSINESS 


like a finality ? Are we coming to feel more 
and more at home in the thought of heaven, 
and the angels, and the life of the spirit? 

Judging not by our acts or our professions, 
but by our appetites, our honest preferences, 
the apportionment of our time and our zeal, 
is our look upward or downward? If the 
latter, the yoke is pressing on our necks, the 
plow is pulling down on the harness, our 
business is driving us, we are not driving our 
business. 


Our Petty Tasks. 

Now energy, as far as it goes, allies us 
with the Father, who “ worketh hitherto ” as 
Christ worked. To be sure, there is no 
possibility that a man may work as hard or 
toil as constantly as the Master Workman of 
the universe. Be fervent in spirit and dili¬ 
gent in business as we will—as fervent and 
diligent as Paul himself—yet our fervency 
will fall far below God’s sun, and our dili¬ 
gence far below his rain. God is at work in 
his world while we are sleeping and while 


<A TLA IN TALK 


15 


we are resting, in storm and calm, under the 
snow as well as under the blossoms. 

How absurd for man, no matter how 
capable of labor, no matter how industrious, 
to be conceitedly proud of a day’s work! 
All the work of all the days of all the men 
who ever lived upon this earth would not 
accomplish one minute of God’s gigantic 
tasks. “The Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work. I must be about my Father’s busi¬ 
ness.” Christ could say that, for he could 
still God’s tempests, he could turn water into 
wine, he could summon the fishes of the sea, 
he could multiply loaves of bread, and wither 
fig-trees at a glance. Christ had command 
of the Father’s resources of labor; he could 
handle the Father’s tools. But how foolish 
for us pygmies to say, as in our pride of in¬ 
dustry we virtually often say, “ The Father 
worketh hitherto, and we work.” 

We look up at the towering walls of our 
mills, we hear the thunder of the vast 
machinery within, we see cars and great 
ships carrying the product over the world, 


i6 


"BUSINESS 


and in the rush of traffic, the complexity of 
our big ledgers, the largeness of our bank 
account, we get to thinking our business 
enormous and noteworthy. When we look 
down from heaven some day on all our lit¬ 
tle affairs here, they will surely seem more 
trivial than our school-day sports seem to us 
now, with their snowball houses, their mock 
courts, their pomp of paper regimentals. 

A Look Ahead. 

I would have you think with me a mo¬ 
ment, careworn man of business; I would 
have you consider with me a moment, busy 
housewife, thronged, with many tasks: con¬ 
sider the time that soon is coming, that 
surely is coming to us all. 

Is your business farming? Fancy your 
life a few brief years from now, without soil, 
fences, horses, plows; with no seed to sow, 
no harvests to reap; no more to do with stub¬ 
born matter, no more to do with the fruitful 
elements. 

There are farmers who plant and till God’s 


^ TLAIN TALK 


I 7 


vineyard and sow good seed in the hearts 
of his children, at the same time that they 
follow the plow in the furrow or ride the 
clattering reaper. That farming goes right 
on in the spirit-land. But who can imagine 
the emptiness of existence that must befall 
at death a farmer whose thought has been 
only of matter, only of wheat and barns and 
pigs, when all these things have slipped 
away into nothingness? What and where 
will be his business then? 

Possibly your business is that of a teacher 
or a student. Are you so bent on those 
pursuits that your books have become your 
real world, and languages or sciences, history 
or mathematics, your chief interests? Are 
you busy constantly with pen and paper, with 
encyclopedia and dictionary? Is “scholar” 
your noblest name ? 

There are scholars whose studies are of the 
soul, of God, of life and death; those studies 
go right on. But what will you do when 
you enter the spirit-land, where lip-language 
is clumsy indeed compared with heart-lan- 


8 


‘BUSINESS 


guage, where botany and geology and as¬ 
tronomy pass with the passing of the world, 
and the history of our wars and heroes is all 
like a nursery tale? You, whose life is your 
lore, what sort of existence are you making 
ready for yourself in that land where the 
least child of trustful heart may be wiser in 
all true lore than your wildest dreams of 
science ever fancied possible? What will 
you think, in that day, of your business here 
on earth? 

Or you may be a mechanic, as Christ was. 
Your fingers may have bent themselves to 
the shape of the saw-handle. You may have 
become merely the human cog in some great 
machine. Hammer and tongs, anvil and 
forge, wheel and graver, may have become 
added organs of your body, so thoroughly 
are they parts of you. Is your life confined 
to these things? 

Christ’s was not. Doubtless the joints he 
made were neat and firm. Doubtless his 
work was well done and quickly done. 
Doubtless he was not above his work in any 


<A TLAtN TALK 


9 


evil sense; and yet how grandly he was 
above his work! Are you at work as he 
was, young carpenter, on the “ many man¬ 
sions,” while you build these mansions of 
wood and stone? 

Are you, young machinist, managing with 
your wheels of steel and belts of rubber the 
belts and wheels of human character, and 
with your product of cloth or thread or pins 
or boots is there to your credit a rich result 
of noble living and fine inspiration of others ? 
That manufacturing continues, we know, 
when the last factory fire is out, and the sun, 
the source of all factory power, is dead. 
But if this is not so, and your whole life 
whirls with your wheel and is wrapped up in 
your packages, no vacuum the strongest air- 
pump can make is as empty as your exist¬ 
ence will be when you get to a machineless 
world, where tools and wheels and bands are 
not. 

Or are you at work in a home ? Are the 
cares of a Martha yours? Is your life a 
dull round of fire-building, cooking, washing 


20 


'BUSINESS 


dishes, making beds, sweeping, sewing— 
these, and such as these, and nothing else? 
What will the Marthas do when food is no 
longer to be cooked, when the garments 
need no mending, the golden floors no 
sweeping? 

“ We shall rest,” I hear them say, with 
longing for that time. They have learned 
on earth, however, if they have had a chance 
to try it, that nothing is so melancholy as 
resting with nothing to do, especially when 
one enters that rest from a very busy life. 
There is no rest except in change of inter¬ 
ests and variety of pursuits. All other rest 
is merely an exchange of weariness for 
weariness. 

But what will those Marthas do whose 
lives have had no share of Mary’s better 
part, which cannot be taken away from her? 
What will the Marthas do when they get 
to a world without house-cleaning and cook¬ 
ing-stoves? This may seem to some a triv¬ 
ial question. To me, indeed, it is a very 
sad and solemn one, as I think of some 


TLAIN TALK 


21 


women I have known whose immortal souls 
are to all appearances “packed into a nar¬ 
row act,” as Browning says. They have 
few thoughts which may not be symbolized 
by a dish-cloth. 

Now housework is noble, dignified, holy, 
when it is not merely housework—when 
with the darning of stockings go smiles of 
sympathy; when food for the spirit is pre¬ 
pared by the house-mother as well as food 
for the body; when as much thought is 
given to the purity of the souls about her as 
to the purity of her kitchen floors. In that 
case all of these lower ministries fit in with 
and assist the higher. But when the lower 
end with themselves, they are like a ladder 
reaching vaguely up into the air, the end 
resting on nothing. 

Busy? Yes. I can think of no one that 
can contrive to be so fiercely busy as a care- 
burdened mistress of a house, with its vast 
crowd of petty tasks. And I can think of 
no business so melancholy as hers, if its 
pettiness is not allied in some way to large 


22 


"BUSINESS 


interests, and the transient nature of all her 
acts is not dignified by eternal purposes. 

Will it stand Transplanting ? 

We cannot review all the occupations of 
men. The story of them all is the same. 
They all deal with trivial, fleeting, worldly 
matters, which may be transformed into 
business worthy of immortal souls. Ten, 
twenty, thirty years from now, and the most 
learned lawyer will have no more use for his 
law library and his briefs. He will have 
passed to a land of peace, to the court of 
the great Judge. 

By that time the sweetest poet will have 
forgotten his noblest songs in order to learn 
the nobler songs of the angels. By that 
time the doctors will have lost their for¬ 
mulas, their principles of diagnosis, their 
memory of earth’s fevers and consumptions, 
for every one is well there. The preacher’s 
sermons will all be left behind in the dusty 
secretary. The musician will not remember 


<A TLAIN TALK 


23 


earth’s pianos and organs, lost in delight at 
the harp of a thousand strings. 

Ten, forty, fifty years, and our books will 
be balanced, our garments laid aside, our 
houses echoing to the tread of other feet, 
our tools clasped by other hands; our brief 
and hurried life here will be transplanted to 
another world, about which we know little, 
to be sure, and yet this thing most cer¬ 
tainly : that it will be a world of spirit, and 
not of matter; that in it our earthly business 
will have no place, but the Father’s business 
be preeminent. Ten, forty, fifty years from 
now, and we may many of us wish—with oh, 
what bitterness of regret!—that we knew 
more about our Father’s business. 

We are skilled in our business here; shall 
we be skilled in our Father’s business there, 
or must we with infinite sorrow do our 
work there awkwardly? Here we are the 
superintendents, the overseers, of others. 
There shall we be counted with appren¬ 
tices? Here our work wins praise for its ef- 


24 


'BUSINESS 


ficiency. There, will all the hosts of heaven 
pity us for our clumsiness, and try lovingly 
to help us out of our crudities? 

Is our business here the business of the 
Father, so that it will stand transplanting? 
Ten, forty, fifty years from now we shall see 
that there is no more important question for 
us in all God’s universe than that. 

What is “Our Father's Business" ? 

And so I must go on to ask, What is the 
Father’s business? It is not enough to say 
that it deals with things permanent as op¬ 
posed to things transient. Nor is it enough 
to say that it deals with matters of infinite 
scope as opposed to the confined events of 
the material universe. All that is vague; 
and surely Christ had something very defi¬ 
nite before him when he said, “ Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father’s busi¬ 
ness?” What did Christ consider his Fa¬ 
ther’s business? 

To preach good tidings to the poor. To 
proclaim release to the captives, and recover- 


<A TLA IN TALK 


2 5 


ing of sight to the blind. To set at liberty 
them that are bruised. To proclaim the ac¬ 
ceptable year of the Lord. To seek and to 
save that which was lost. Not to be minis¬ 
tered unto, but to minister. To give his life 
a ransom for many. That our joy might be 
full. That all should know the Father, and 
the Son whom he had sent. To call sinners 
to repentance. 

He had not where to lay his head. He 
counted it blessed to be reviled and per¬ 
secuted, to mourn, to be the least of all and 
the servant of all, to carry a heavy cross. It 
was his meat, and often his only meat, to do 
the will of his Father. As that will opened 
out before him, in the wilderness and on 
the mount, in temple and synagogue and 
publican’s house, by precipice and seaside, 
in storm and calm, with “Hosanna!” or 
“ Crucify him ! ” with frankincense or vin¬ 
egar, in manger or the new tomb wherein no 
man yet had lain—as God’s will opened out 
before him, his business was—to do it. 

He took no anxious thought for the 


26 


'BUSINESS 


morrow; he knew that his hour had not yet 
come; and when it came he could say that 
his business on earth was finished, and yet 
could look forward to its instant continu¬ 
ance, with the words, “ This day shalt thou 
be with me in paradise.” 

There is no need that I should try to 
paint that blessed life, that life which is our 
despair in its perfection at the same time 
that it is our sufficient hope in its promises. 
With it as our model, with Christ’s practic¬ 
ing of his Father’s business before our eyes, 
how are we to set about it, and how must 
we modify our business habits to conform 
to it? How can we, too, be about our 
Father’s business? 

Our Business Manual. 

In the first place, we must get our busi¬ 
ness education. You know what the text¬ 
book is. To what book but the Bible could 
we go to learn about the Father’s business? 

And yet how little reading of the Bible is 
for power! How little of it is business- 


<A TLA IN TALK 27 

like!. How little is with a clear purpose, 
seeking definite results! 

In this blessed book—so has run the testi¬ 
mony of the Father’s business men for cent¬ 
uries—has been found their wisest instruc¬ 
tion and mightiest inspiration. It has been 
their manual, their handbook, their direct¬ 
ory to all their ways of endeavor. 

You know that there are men who have 
what is known as the “business sense.” 
They can tell by intuition when an enter¬ 
prise will be profitable, when a visitor will 
purchase, where an advertisement will pay. 
There are others whose business ventures 
are at blank haphazard, and fail as often as 
they succeed. 

This “business sense” in religious matters 
is one thing gained by a constant study of 
the Bible. One gets to know by intuition, 
after years of companionship with the Book 
of books, just what deeds will further his 
Master’s interest, and what will be out of 
harmony with his business. The old Bible- 
reader does not need to argue or meditate, 


28 


'BUSINESS 


when a course of conduct is before him, as 
to its bearing on his Father’s business. As 
promptly as the experienced merchant tells 
the traveling salesman, “ That’s what we 
want,” or, “ That we cannot deal in,” so 
promptly can an experienced Bible-reader 
decide on his course of action. 

The importance of this cannot be over¬ 
estimated, in our delicately poised world, 
where a badly planned event may wreck a 
life; where roads diverge so gradually that 
we get into the devil’s path before we know 
it; where corners are so common, and such 
momentous interests depend on our follow¬ 
ing the right way. To feel sure in our 
hearts, “ That God would have me do; that 
God would have me avoid,” surely this is a 
blessing worth striving for; and I know of 
no way of getting it but by studying God’s 
business manual, the blessed Scriptures. 

Yet this were little if this were all. The 
Bible tells us far more than what to do; it 
tells us how to do it. You may say what 
you will about the age of the Bible; you 


t/f TLAIN TALK 


2 9 


may ask how—so long before cards were 
used for gambling, or the first stock ex¬ 
change was built, or the modern theatre or¬ 
ganized, or the first lottery ticket printed, or 
the first ballot cast on the Australian system 
—you may ask how this antiquated volume 
can possibly be a guide in our complex 
modern life. 

Your question is answered by the experi¬ 
ence of millions, who would join with me 
in the hearty statement that they know no 
book, no pamphlet—nay, not even the latest 
edition of the most vigorous newspaper— 
that is so fully abreast with the times as the 
Bible—abreast, and leagues ahead. 

I have never met a social problem, how¬ 
ever complicated with the latest fashions 
and the newest vice, that its principles 
would not solve. I have never yet seen a 
weak spot in the most intricate modern 
machinery that Bible principles would not 
strengthen. Spiritual truth is as eternal as 
physical truth. If Moses had discovered 
the law of gravitation, and Newton, far 


30 


'BUSINESS 


later, the Ten Commandments, you would 
hardly distrust that physical truth because 
Moses discovered it so long ago. 

This book is a manual of action for our 
civilization as complete as for the Grecian 
and the Roman. No book can take its 
place, if we are to do our Father’s business. 
No book in all this world’s history has even 
pretended to take its place. 

I plead for a larger reading and studying 
of it. Bible-classes should be as largely 
attended by the old as by the young. A 
Sunday-school which contains fifty young 
people should contain fifty old people. 

We think nothing of reading large pages 
of fine print about our secular business—the 
prices of goods, the state of the market, the 
fashion magazine, the housekeeper’s journal, 
the report of the town council or the insur¬ 
ance company. It would startle most of 
us, I fear, if we were required to spend as 
much time daily in reading up our Father’s 
business, which is preeminently ours. The 
entire New Testament, you know, was 


TLA IN TALK 31 

once printed in a single issue of a daily 
paper. 

Bible reading goes by inches; secular 
reading, by feet and yards. Bible reading 
goes by verses; secular reading, by long 
articles. What Christian who spends an 
hour a day in reading would not consider 
me insane if I deliberately proposed his 
reading the Bible for half of that hour, in 
the interests of his business? What do we 
consider our business, when it comes to facts 
and habits? Are we in earnest, you and I, 
about our Father’s business? Then in long 
hours by ourselves and in classes with 
others, with wise commentaries, too, to assist 
our duller brains, let us study our business 
manual. 

Our Business College. 

But our business education must not be 
confined to a text-book. What is the best 
training-school for the Father’s business? 
Beyond comparison, the prayer-meeting. 
Here we learn to use our tongues. Here 


32 


'BUSINESS 


we learn to use our brains. Here we begin 
to see how to make the contact between the 
Bible we have been studying and the people 
who need its help. 

The prayer-meeting is the clearing-house, 
the stock exchange of the Father’s business. 
I have a helpful thought and I give it to 
you; you have one and you give it to me; 
and God’s business is doubly profited by 
the transfer. 

In the prayer-meeting you learn new 
business methods. This man does God’s 
business by arguing. You get points from 
him. This man works by force of character. 
You get points from him. This man ac¬ 
complishes his results by means of spiritual 
sweetness and light, this by practical com¬ 
mon sense, this by energy and zeal, this by 
persuasiveness. In the prayer-meeting ex¬ 
change you get points from all and give a 
little help to all in turn. 

Have you ever passed from a town that 
has none of that mysterious thing called 
public spirit to a town that has it? In 


Jl TLAIN TALK 


33 


the former the saloons multiply for lack of 
opposition, the cows run the streets, grass 
grows on the sidewalks, water breeds disease 
in filthy pools. In the second everything is 
clean, neat, bright, and prosperous. There 
is a village improvement society, a building 
association, a town paper, a town library and 
reading circle, a lecture association. 

The difference springs simply from the 
fact that in the second town two or three 
—yes, twenty or thirty—are wont to meet 
together in the town’s name and for its in¬ 
terests, and the spirit of enterprise and prog¬ 
ress is in the midst of them. Public spirit 
in Christ’s kingdom is conditioned on the 
meeting together in his name, with him in 
the midst of the meeting. 

If the comparison we might make be¬ 
tween our reading for our secular business 
and for our Father’s business is to the disad¬ 
vantage of the latter, how much less favor¬ 
ably does our zeal in cooperation for God’s 
work compare with the energy wherewith we 
push our schemes for secular improvement! 


34 


BUSINESS 


The city of God which lies in our town— 
I fear if we could see it in material guise 
we should find its streets grass-grown, its 
sewers stagnant, its buildings in decay. 
The citizens of that city need to organize a 
board of trade, or, rather, put life into the 
one already organized, the prayer-meeting. 
A new plan for rapid transit is broached in a 
crowded city; a new town-hall is under dis¬ 
cussion in a town; street lighting is pro¬ 
posed in a little village: and straightway 
arises more eager, thoughtful, strenuous, 
business-like debating over that matter than 
the Father’s business is likely to get for a 
year. We are not in earnest or half in 
earnest about our Father’s business until 
we have given ourselves a thorough busi¬ 
ness training for it, in Bible study and 
prayer-meeting work. 

Our Partner. 

But in entering upon our Father’s busi¬ 
ness we must have a partner; and who 
should the partner be but our Father him¬ 
self? Oh, that I could express half of whta 


e/f TLAIN TALK 


35 


this should mean to us—partnership with 
the Lord of the universe! We do not be¬ 
lieve it, though we profess to believe it. It 
is too good to believe. 

We say to each other: “ I am going to 
. my work.” a Now I will set about my 
business.” “ I have so much to do to-day.” 
Never do we say, with glad recognition of 
our heavenly partnership, “ We are going to 
our work; we have much to do to-day, but 
it is a mere trifle compared with our power 
of doing it.” 

We profess companionship and live lone¬ 
liness. Our creeds claim constant help and 
dependence; our words and feelings speak 
of helpless independence. 

If a Christian can honestly say of a task, 
“ It is my business, / must about it,” then it 
is not his business as a Christian, and the 
sooner he gives it the go-by the better. 
Nothing is the Christian’s business unless 
it is the Father’s business also. Nothing is 
the Christian’s business to which he must go 
alone. 

What a blessing this is you cannot know 


36 


"BUSINESS 


until you have known the horrors of iso¬ 
lation. Learn what it means to have no 
human adviser, no friend near to direct you, 
no overseer to plan for you, no one to take 
an interest in your work, praise its virtues 
and point out its faults. Your life, indeed, 
has been singularly fortunate if it has not at 
any time reached such a point of isolation. 
Many of us have known it often. 

But no one need know it ever. That is 
the message of Christianity. No one need 
be left alone, with his single courage and 
unhelped power, to contend with this jost¬ 
ling world. Every man or woman or child 
who sincerely enters upon his Father’s busi¬ 
ness may have in it a partnership that 
means no despondency, no uncertainty, no 
friendlessness, no isolation, no weakness, no 
worry, but continual good cheer and power 
and fearlessness. He goes about his work 
with a laughing heart and a hand that never 
falters. That partnership we must have, 
or we shall never succeed in the Father’s 
business. 


Ji TLA IN TALK 


37 


Our Capital. 

And for the Father’s business we must 
have some capital, as well as for earthly 
enterprises. What our Father contributes 
we can never measure—infinities of love, 
immensities of power, boundless resources of 
ingenuity and skill and wisdom. But what 
capital can we add worth even the mention? 

First and chiefly there is faith—faith as 
a grain of mustard seed, that can remove 
mountains; faith full-grown, that can lay 
hold on God’s utmost, and move worlds. 

We deny God’s word when we doubt the 
importance of this contribution to the joint 
capital. Faith dies without works, but 
works never even come to birth without 
faith. If we are to do God’s business in this 
world we must have faith to believe it worth 
doing, faith to believe ourselves able to do 
it, faith that God will send fruitage to our 
sowing, permanence to our building. 

If God’s business in this world cannot be 
done without this petty human faith of ours, 


38 


'BUSINESS 


as it surely cannot, then human faith is any¬ 
thing but petty. No matter what wonderful 
gifts to the carrying out of his plans God 
may make, there must be something won¬ 
derful, too, in our gift to the enterprise. 
And indeed we might well be proud of our 
mighty human faith, did we not suspect, and 
more than suspect, that in some inscrutable 
way it also is the gift of the Most High to 
our needs. 

And so we must add something else to 
the joint capital, something without which 
faith will soon pass into presumption and 
bravado—that is, humility. 

When we are weak we are strong: mar¬ 
velous business formula that! How would 
it work in other business than this strange 
business of our Father’s? When a stock¬ 
broker feels weak, undecided, helpless—then 
is he strong? Will the formula work for 
the general, the lawyer, the doctor? Only 
as all these are Christians, and have brought 
their doctoring, generalship, pleading, and 
brokerage into subordination to the Father’s 


TLA IN TALK 


39 


business and under his paradoxical business 
laws. 

The humility of God’s natural world, 
which opens wide arms to the inflowing of 
God’s power—that we must contribute to 
the spiritual capital of the Father’s business. 

We must contribute love also. That is 
something that rarely enters the assets of 
earthly firms. It is hardly put down in the 
invoice. “ Each preferring others to him¬ 
self”: that motto will not do for worldly 
counters. “ The last shall be first, the ser¬ 
vant be the chief ”: that is hardly the law of 
trade, except where trade is Christianized. 

But love is the basis of the Father’s busi¬ 
ness, the motive which seeks the power that 
faith supplies and humility retains. A sense 
of duty will not keep us engaged for a single 
day in the Father’s business. Neither will 
a feeling of gratitude. Neither will fear. 
Nothing will but love of God and love of 
our brother, the helping of whom is God’s 
loving business and ours. 

Just one thing more we must contribute 


40 


'BUSINESS 


to this capital, and that is perseverance. 
God’s business meets with reverses, because 
the reverses are in God’s plan for his busi¬ 
ness. Strange business, this, which con¬ 
trives and seeks its own failures! Yet just 
as a mechanic, to drill his apprentice, often 
has him set to work on the knottiest timber 
with inadequate tools, and sometimes gives 
him impossible orders that he may learn 
what tools to use and what tasks to attempt, 
so the Father often permits us, his partners, 
to gain the surest of all knowledge, the 
knowledge that comes from failure. 

He asks us to contribute perseverance. 
How can he form wise and far-reaching 
plans for us, indeed, until he can count on 
our dauntlessness? How can he enter into 
partnership with us and intrust us with a 
share in his business, while we are likely to 
fail him at the first reverses ? The bull-dog 
courage that never loses its hold—that we 
must contribute to the Father’s business. 
Four things: love, the motive to work; 
faith, that gets power for work; humility 


<A TLA IN TALK 


41 


and perseverance, that maintain faith’s hold 
on power—those make up our capital. 

Our Hours of Work. 

What are the hours of work in this busi¬ 
ness of our Father’s? The average Chris¬ 
tian thinks he does well if he devotes every 
seventh day to the Father’s business, and 
that day spent to a large extent in talking 
gossip, reading newspapers, taking walks, 
and eating big dinners. The seventh day is 
given us as a rest-day, rather, to prepare us 
for doing our Father’s business the other six 
days of the week. 

When Christ demanded of us all our 
mind, heart, strength, he demanded of us 
also all our time. “ All our time! ” you ex¬ 
claim in dismay. “All our time, and do 
nothing else?” Certainly. Strength and 
mind and soul are exercised in time, and 
make up time to us. If our Father’s busi¬ 
ness fails of part of our time, it fails of part 
of our strength and mind and soul. 

“ But what are we to do with our other 


42 


‘BUSINESS 


business?” you ask. And that brings me 
to the chief thing I wanted to say to you: 
We are to have no other business. 

There comes a time in almost every 
Christian’s life when he realizes the tragic 
earnestness, the tremendous import of 
Christ’s saying, “Ye cannot serve two 
masters.” In that day there comes to him 
the thought most solemn of all mortal 
thoughts, the thought of the eternal years. 
In that day he sees clearly that there is 
no compromising with the eternal years. 
Either they are to rule his life utterly, the 
thought of them governing all his acts and 
influencing all his plans, or the very belief in 
them must be essentially annihilated, and he 
must live as if the grave ended all, must eat 
and drink, for to-morrow comes nothingness. 

When one has determined on a trip across 
the ocean, how indifferent he becomes to the 
weeds in the garden, the amount of water in 
the cistern, the plans for the next entertain¬ 
ment! In the presence of the great new 
fact much of his life is shuffled from him, 


A TLA IN TALK 


43 


and becomes at once to his eye as petty and 
trivial as it will seem from across the Atlan¬ 
tic. Somewhat in the same way much of our 
ordinary business becomes inconsequential 
to us when we allow our thoughts to turn 
toward the flood of years. Nothing seems 
of much moment now but our preparations 
for that voyage. All our time seems now 
too short for the Father’s business. 

The World's Business: A Prophecy. 

This experience of the single man, the 
solitary Christian, here and there, is to be¬ 
come the experience of the happy world. 
There is to come a glad day when the col¬ 
lege doors will be closed, the factories 
hushed, the wheels of the locomotives still, 
the steamships motionless, the printing- 
presses idle, looms and pens and gravers and 
saws and brushes and needles all put away, 
the business of this earth at a standstill. 
What happens to the individual will have 
happened to the world. 

In that time of clear seeing all nations, 


44 


f BUSINESS 


struck with amazement at the pettiness of 
the tasks on which they have been wasting 
these brief years of life, will have thrown 
down their tools and rushed to take up the 
Father’s business. In that hour the rich 
will wrap warm garments about the poor, 
and will sweep their tables bare to feed the 
hungry. In that hour the wise will leave 
their libraries and the pure their kneeling- 
stools, and will enter the foulest dens of 
vice, and plead with and instruct the most 
ignorant and vile. 

There will be no newspapers, for men will 
be too busy making history to write it or 
read it. There will be no great paintings, 
for the artists will all have set to work to 
paint God’s image afresh on blurred souls. 
There will be no great books, for all men’s 
minds will be centered on the one Book. 
There will be no great works of industry, no 
marvels of mechanism, no Eiffel towers or 
Washington monuments or Brooklyn bridges 
or electric lights or electric cars. 

Civilization will have gone back to its 


J1 TLAIN TALK 


45 


first elements: will have perished, indeed. 
There will be nothing left of our complex 
worldly business but just enough to feed the 
body, clothe it and shelter it, and keep it 
strong for the Father’s business. 

We have books enough; gems, silks, 
paintings, palaces, furniture, dishes enough; 
rare and curious inventions enough. Our 
Christian civilization will in that glad day 
cease to produce these things. We need 
no more of them; we need more of Christ. 
Ten years —ten years of thorough-going de¬ 
votion to the Father’s business would bring 
in the millennium, would cover the earth 
with the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
waters cover the sea. 

The Christian world will see this, too, 
some day; will lay aside its superfluities, will 
content itself with bare necessities, will de¬ 
vote its entire time and strength and skill to 
the Father’s business. 

And then—after every sot has been lifted 
from the gutter, every hard heart softened, 
every tear wiped away, the idle set to the 


46 


'BUSINESS 


joys of labor, the silent brought to utterance, 
the doubter to the truth, after every rich 
man has been taught the delight of giving 
and every poor man the grace of receiving, 
after all the hungry are fed, the homeless 
sheltered, the weary rested, the naked 
clothed, the fearful comforted—then from 
the tomb of that civilization buried with 
Christ will come forth such a civilization as 
earth has never imagined. 

Then poets will sing as the angels, wise 
men have clear vision into the deepest 
secrets of nature, mechanics learn mastery 
over God’s mightiest forces. Then most 
marvelous pictures will be painted, and 
richest homes be built, and from all hearts 
of redeemed mankind will rise the heaven- 
born hymn, “ Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace, good will to men!” 
Then all the world will be about the 
Father’s business. 

At Work for Eternity. 

That day, foretold by clear-eyed prophets 
of old and sure to come, will come only as 


c A TLAIN TALK 


47 


you and I, in our single lives, have faith and 
love and bravery enough to resign the busi¬ 
ness of the world, or rather transform it 
into the Father’s business. It cannot come 
otherwise. The kingdom comes as a grain 
of mustard seed, as a bit of leaven hid in 
three measures. 

Will we dare it, for Christ’s sake, for the 
world’s sake? Can we forego wealth and 
men’s applause and ease, live plainly, dress 
simply, accept most modest houses, use no 
luxuries, see others outstrip us in the race 
for money, power, and place, hear ourselves 
called visionaries, fanatics, hypocrites, self- 
righteous? Can we do all this and forego 
all this, that our Father’s business may 
prosper in our hands? Can we forget our 
business behind us, and, looking forward to 
the things that are before us, can we press 
toward this mark of our high calling, our 
high business, in Christ Jesus? 

If we can, then perfect peace is ours, then 
an infinite power will flood all our weakness, 
an ecstasy inexpressible will fill our veins, 
doubt will give place to assurance and in- 


48 


‘BUSINESS 


decision to confidence, and we can do all 
things—all our Father’s business—through 
Christ who strengthens us. Then all our 
work will be changed into a holiday—a holy 
day—and all our ignoble dreams of decaying 
wealth and fleeting fame and empty power 
will be lost in the glad expectation of that 
day when we may hear our Master saying: 
“ Well done, thou good and faithful servant: 
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I 
will make thee ruler over many things: en¬ 
ter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” 

The business men of some communities 
are compelled to have three hands in their 
watches, the third pointing to standard time. 
Let us, business men and women, add a 
third hand to all our watches, and let our 
standard time be eternity. 











\ 











































































































































ft/ 

yr« 





.i 'ft-" Wi'a*. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



raw 

l-.ir 






J 


*v> 


v t O' 


0 033 261 146 A 

, - * ■>:. &B 

• •* ■: • >viaHKISScSB tw %V^S8?3'&t 






r* ; r' '»* 


m 


; . ■ i J - 

* ■• J' . L /If im TJT 

M I i A. • 

&. v. '.v 




- 34 M n*lrc«c '• i 

*V >i $ 3 w A r,*r • 

[ », ' * JL-. <>. t\ /. 

•$?<' • . 


V~>' 

-• -yWl TfitiBEgl 

-rJ.» 5 ^’,'» fr. ' “X 

A -V ! tVB&ME 


wM&mm 



w., w«4 y 

> A fc»-. : I » IwK 


v# k$ 4 m 

v ; . $ r , w i 


w* 7 . 


«•. ■*. 


- .V' 


„•« » 4 >-. i 

.V*‘-vMr 
■ lefflJ 


;r if'lv 

v . . VyL^ . 

>« wv* • oSrli .-v 

; ■ ?* ;*//$ :Vrf?feSiSK5S £ 

• ^mwf 

• 8 n vSBsgr H 

•Vit vjASr ' . p 

• ■/ dwD* . .' - V v i\-*’U 


« ' / 






23 K 




. V-. ; v v 

.‘/j , •*- - 


r: 4 ■ >• 

. V-' U 

I 

J 


*. j 

'iQfir' 


> f ' ■ i - V' • * - *7 *' / ■ I ' 

• v - » • i? 3 ' Vi A; 

" i? ’'' ... 

• 1 

4 . k ; I 

v *.;«* .-; v. -v w ^ ’ fSfJ j • N \ i , • 

v-n! ' 59®^^ it n 

■-A . wlH, ■ ; 


.*• ‘ . .«‘1 1*2 


, -s'-* 1 '’ 

• - !#•«_> 

1 • ' ,»'V j¥ ia 


t % • ; « ’ll- < 

'■ , p '' y.'V- 

. • iXv •Rffl. 


'.A ■'■.■*‘Mir n & 


• oWrl, ‘ * HA M; 

,1*^, !. • * * / J 9 f . t (ji 

. 


..'Vf. 


Vw. 






